Epson AcuLaser C900 colour laser printer review

Originally published in GP magazine .

Written for GP magazine around 2003. This is the version I submitted - the published article may have been edited.

Until recently the only affordable colour printers have been inkjets, where consumable costs are prohibitive for printing large volumes. The price of colour laser printers has dropped recently and there are several now available in the £500+ price range.

We recently purchased an Epson AcuLaser C900 for £500 + VAT. This is one of the new colour laser printers now available.

It is fairly large, about the size of a cool box, and weighs 27kg. It is quite smart and has a paper tray at the bottom on the side, and paper comes out on top when printed. There isn’t a control panel on the printer. Two LEDs flash in code when something goes wrong, but for proper information on print status, consumables and the like you need to check the printer utility program that is installed on the computer.

The printer comes with parallel and USB interfaces for direct connection to a PC. A network version is more expensive. Installation is straightforward and there are easy instructions to follow, which basically consist of inserting the CD that is supplied when asked.

The driver is easy to use. There are all the usual options: to print multiple copies, to resize printouts and to print more than one page on a sheet to save paper. There is also the option to print only in black and white, and numerous different quality settings for whether you are printing graphics or pictures.

To minimise the size of the machine the four toners are in a carousel, which rotates and uses each in turn when printing in colour; this can make them a bit fiddly to change. The printer is quoted at 16 pages per minute in black but only 4 pages per minute in colour because of the carousel. Epson make a big deal about how cheap the printer is in terms of running costs when printing only black text. The toner cartridges are rated for 4,500 pages of average coverage. Black toner retails for £40, which works out at less than a penny a sheet. The other three colour ones are £90 each and are also rated at 4,500 pages. It is worth noting the printer comes with toner that is a third full to reduce the initial cost, but you may feel cheated.

You can easily upgrade the printer by adding extra memory to it. You can also add an extra paper source that goes underneath the printer, and there is also an automatic duplexing add-on that you can buy for printing on both sides of paper.

I was impressed by the print quality. At this point you might be asking why you need one. The answer lies in how expensive it is to get a printer to produce leaflets and A4 posters for you, especially in relatively small runs of a couple of hundred.

We were quoted £350 for 500 A4 leaflets folded into three. Although bigger volumes aren’t that much more expensive, they can be wasteful. We still have boxes of out-of-date practice leaflets from the last time we used a printing company. Using this machine we can print off leaflets in relatively small batches of 100 or so. If we then want to change anything, like the time of a clinic or service that we offer, it is easy to change and not waste hundreds of pounds on out-of-date leaflets.

Posters in the waiting room are also more colourful and attractive with colour. In-house designed patient information leaflets are also more professional looking and cheaper to produce in small runs than on an inkjet.

The only danger is that I like it so much I might be tempted to have it on my desk!